These are the Days to never forget: Christmas Traditions Begin

While everyone else was standing in line last night at Toys R Us...we Days were sitting on our couch snuggled up together watching Toy Story 3. Which I think it's safe to say is as good as the first one and WAY better than the second one. Andrew wanted to get to bed early because he knew Santa was sending a special someone his way on Thanksgiving night, John...the Elf on the Shelf. The Elf on the Shelf has been apart of our family Christmas tradition since 2008, but it was only this year that Andrew decided to name him John (after a little boy in his class) instead of just Elf.

And sure enough John appeared on schedule!

At first Andrew was a little distraught when he woke up and didn't see him in the library, he just knew that's where he would be. And the first words out of his mouth weren't "Where's my coffee milk?" He was out of bed and looking for John the Elf. But after a few minutes of seeking we found him, sitting happily on Andrew's trophy self above his bed. :)

After Andrew said his hellos and told John how good he's been this year, we watch a few videos about the Elves on the Shelves. I love a child's imagination powers.

After all of that we were off to see Tangled. It was really cute, but still doesn't beat How to Train Your Dragon. Then we let Andrew decide where he wanted to eat lunch...it was a torturous decision between BWW & Waffle House. Ultimately Waffle House won because it was about 40 degrees outside raining and I mention hot chocolate. SOLD!

After lunch we headed to Clegg's to pick out our Christmas tree. This was another area where some might say I'm a little spoiled...I've never had a fake Christmas tree- EVER. And I don't plan too, unless for some unfortunate reason my kids are super allergic to Frasier Fir trees. Even when we lived in the condo I bought a mini live tree in a pot to keep outside on our little porch. Every year my parents and I would drive all over town trying to find just the right Christmas tree. My Dad knew all the right questions to ask: Where did it come from? When was it cut? How long was it on the truck? So today I passed on the knowledge of picking the perfect Christmas tree to Andrew. He was content just to walk around smelling them and popping the sap bubbles, another plus about a fake tree...there's no reason to ever buy a Christmas scented candle...just pop a sap bubble at the base of the tree and your house will be smelling like evergreen forest in now time flat.

He was studying this one really hard, looking for bare spots aka "holes."

He immediately became a Christmas tree expert!

Now for the "sniff test."

It passed!

Bless his heart. He watched the tree the whole way home just to make sure it didn't fall out of the truck complete with up dates: "It's still there...still there...still there." "It's limbs are blowing Daddy, SLOW DOWN!" "Still there...still there...yep, still there." Hilarious!

He was pretty proud of his pick!